Legislation soon to be introduced by United States Representative Seth Magaziner (Rhode Island), Domenic and Ed’s Law, would change Section 437(d) of the Higher Education Act to clarify that parents who took out student loans for their child can get those loans forgiven if their child becomes totally and permanently disabled.
Under current law, the Department of Education is required to discharge a parent borrower’s liability on these loans only if the student dies.
Senator J.D. Vance (Ohio) will be the lead sponsor of the bill in the U.S. Senate.
Rep. Magaziner is assuming responsibility for this effort from his predecessor, Rep. Jim Langevin (Rhode Island). Rep. Langevin first introduced legislation relating to this issue in 2017 during the 115th Congress. At that time, the Senate cosponsor was Sen. Rob Portman (Ohio). Both Portman and Langevin reintroduced the legislation in the 116th Congress (as S.1219) and 117th Congress (as S.1241).
In the case of Domenic and Ed’s Law, the bill was referred to the committees of jurisdiction (i.e., HELP and Education and Workforce), but it never moved beyond that step. As you know, sometimes legislators find a larger piece of legislation, for example, another bill about education, and add their bills to the larger one. That may be a strategy that Rep. Magaziner and Sen. Vance will employ for the bill this year.
The Special Needs Alliance (SNA) has endorsed the bill to be introduced shortly, and we will provide additional information on the new bill numbers in the near future.
